Rescuer Oliver Rácz.
Oliver Rácz was awarded the Righteous Among the Nations award in September 2022.
William Ganz was born and grew up in Košice, a city that became part of Hungary after the second Vienna Arbitration. Along with other young Jewish people, he was enlisted in forced labor in extremely harsh conditions by the Hungarian authorities in 1940. Thanks to a labor camp doctor and his medical report, he was released after two and half years. He then returned to Košice-Kassa. After the Germans had occupied Hungary, an exhaustive hunt for Jews commenced. One day, walking the streets of Košice, William met an officer he knew briefly before the war. The officer's name was Oliver Rácz - a son of a Jewish father and a Christian mother. He worked in the administration of the labor camps, where he had access to documents and stamps. Rácz provided William with a certificate of a Hungarian Christian soldier, gave him Hungarian military uniforms, and managed to get him to Budapest, accompanied by a woman in rural clothing. He joined the Jewish resistance movement in Budapest, where he met his future wife. After the war, they both returned to Czechoslovakia. William finished his medical studies in Prague, and they immigrated to the United States in 1966.
Dr. Štefan Šimko, born in Košice, worked as a doctor in Budapest. During the war, he decided to join the struggle movement against Nazi Germany and returned to Košice in 1943. At the beginning of 1944, he ended up in a labor camp, where he worked as a unit doctor. When the danger for Jews intensified, he asked his acquaintance Oliver Rácz for help, as he was known to have helped many Jews. Rácz gave Šimko documents of a Hungarian soldier who was killed in Ukraine along with appropriate uniforms. Štefan took a train to Budapest, where he reunited with his fiancée, who was originally from Vojvodina, northern Yugoslavia. They both fought as Yugoslavian partisans under the leadership of Tito. They married after the war and settled in Košice, which was returned to Czechoslovakia.
Katalin Nyiszli was also born in Košice just like Vilém, Štefan, and their rescuer Oliver. After Germany had occupied Hungary, the Jews from Košice were gathered for deportation to Auschwitz. One day, before Katalin was to report to the ghetto, Oliver Rácz provided her with false Christian documents. He put her on a train to Budapest and thus saved her from deportation. According to Oliver Rácz Jr., his dad tried to save the rest of Katalin's family, but it was too late. While waiting for deportation, he provided them with food and clothing and passed letters to them. Katalin Nyiszli stayed in Budapest under a false identity and worked in a sewing factory until the Soviet army liberated the city. After the war, she returned to Czechoslovak Košice and married
, her rescuer. They had two children: a son Oliver Jr. and a daughter Katarína.
